The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a five-member board that has been short four members since last December, may soon see two of the vacancies filled.
President Donald Trump — perhaps in a nod to the fact the Democrats will take control of the House and Senate in January — went the bipartisan route with his nominations Thursday.
The president nominated Nathan Anonick, a Republican and counsel for Arizona Sen. John Boozman on the crypto and derivative markets. That term would expire in 2031.
Trump also went across the aisle, nominating Matt Rowland, a Democrat and current CFTC staff attorney, for a term that ends in 2028.
The sole member of the CFTC currently, Chairman Michael Selig, applauded the nominees on social media site X.
The nominations come amid the incoming Democratic Congress making waves about the legality of prediction markets, specifically sports events contracts.
Confirmation timing
As it stands, the current Republican-led House has a little less than two months to confirm Anonick and Rowland before the Democrats take over control.
It’s unclear why Trump decided to nominate a Democrat to the CFTC — a move he mirrored with a pair of Securities and Exchange Commission nominations on the same day — but at minimum, it would seem to serve to limit discontent during the confirmation process.
If confirmed, the Republicans would maintain a 2-1 margin at the CFTC, and it would seem unlikely the Democrats would be able to gain majority control of the commission during the last two years of Trump’s term.
Both nominees should know their way around the Senate Agriculture Committee, which gets the first crack at their nominations. Anonick worked at the FDIC on plans for handling large bank failures before joining Boozman’s staff. He later helped negotiate the committee’s portion of the Clarity Act, the crypto market structure bill.
Rowland worked on the same bill from the other side of the aisle. He’s spent more than a decade at the CFTC, which loaned him to the committee.
